Ricoh Caplio R6 Samples

First published on: Tuesday, 10 April 2007

Available in black, red and silver, the Caplio R6 is one of a handful of compact digital cameras in the market that have a zoom lens that starts at 28mm, giving you a nice, wide-angle capability, and goes all the way to a very healthy 200mm. You can read the Ricoh R6 press release here.

Sporting a beautiful and large 2.7-inch LCD, the R6 comes with face-detection autofocus technology, CCD sensor anti-shake (also known as shake-reduction) and 7.2 MP (Megapixels) in a body that’s slim (only 20.6mm thick at its thinnest point) and small in dimensions (approximately 99.6 x 55 x 23.3 mm).

The R6 is light in weight (161 g including the rechargeable slim battery) and has a very versatile 7.1x, 28 — 200mm zoom range, making it one of the most ideal carry-around cameras for travel and casual photography, but how do the images measure up?

This article intends to be a one-stop collection point of links and commentary to photos taken with the R6 that will hopefully make your R6 research and evaluation easier.

Official Samples

Ricoh.com has really outdone themselves by releasing 14, excellent, full-sized images in their sample gallery. Extreme focal lengths at 28mm and 200mm were used to capture some of the shots; you can use these to assess the levels of distortion you’ll get from the lens.

Colors are brilliant, with very nice contrast (read: not flat-looking). At ISO100, you can see a hint of noise if you stare at each pixel, but I find the images very pleasing overall with no smearing artifacts from overly-aggressive noise reduction. There’s a hint of purple fringing in the indoor photo, but it’s relatively mild, and to be honest, all modern digital cameras exhibit it to some degree or other.

Review Samples

Ricoh Caplio R6 Launch in Hong Kong

AVBuzz.com covered the R6 launch and has some pictures of the new digital camera from Ricoh, the event itself, and a gallery of some pretty impressive full-sized image samples. My favorite is the second photo, there is very nice detail and color at ISO100. The detail in the fabric and model’s hair can’t measure up to a digital SLR’s standard, but is otherwise very good for such a compact and versatile camera. The initial price of the R6 in Hong Kong is said to be about HKD3000.

User Samples

Ricoh R6 Test Shots by Italicist

In this forum post, Italicist from Singapore shares a link to a gallery of test shots snapped with his new Caplio R6. He also gives a rather unfavorable review of the R6, citing poor image quality.

I like the points he wrote about the physical design and his impressions from handling the camera. You can find further notes about the test images and download a few full-sized images at the linked Picasa gallery.

Personally, I think the R6 pictures are just fine, considering the huge zoom range of the lens. In my opinion, the R6 photos seem much more vivid and sharper than pictures shot at 28mm from comparable cameras such as the Canon PowerShot SD800 IS or Olympus SP-550 UZ, and the R6 photos again appear more crisp at 200mm than from the Olympus SP550. The images degrade slightly at long exposures, especially when photographing night shots and landscapes, with random white dots appearing in the photo, but these are unnoticeable at 4 x 6 prints.

Conclusion

The Ricoh Caplio R6 might not be able to produce images that stand up to pixel-peeping at 100% on computer screens, but the image quality is definitely above average in my books.

I would heartily recommend this camera to, say, a close friend who needs a carry-anywhere compact digital that takes photos with beautiful color, and most importantly, has a very flexible zoom range and features that make capturing the shot easier — I’m looking at the very handy shake reduction and face detection functionality.

The right balance of features and quality of output makes this camera a winner in its class.